Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word or RTF file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Author Guidelines

How to send a submission to Writing From Below

All contributions, critical or creative, in any scholarly discipline, should be submitted online.

Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting, or if already registered can log in and begin the simple five step process.

Papers should be between 3000 and 7000 words and adhere to The Chicago Manual of Style. If you are submitting artwork or multimedia, or proposing any other unusual or complex submissions, please contact the editors.

Any images, illustration, photographs, figures, or tables embedded in the document should also be submitted separately as jpeg files.

Writing From Below does not use footnotes, preferring in-text citations and a bibliography (if appropriate) at the end of the piece. We use an author-date system based on the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press, 2010). The Chicago Manual of Style is the author's primary resource for all things related to referencing, and style and usage. Please adhere strictly to its comprehensive guidelines.

Examples

In-text citation: (White 1993, 81)

Book: White, Edmund. 1993. Genet: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Book chapter: Wittig, Monique. 2005. ‘Point of View: Universal or Particular?' In The Straight Mind and Other Essays. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Print journal article: Butler, Judith. 2007. ‘Wittig's Material Practice: Universalising a Minority Point of View'. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 13(4): 519-533.

Online journal article: Engelbrecht, Penelope. 1997. ‘Bodily Mut(il)ation: Enscribing Lesbian Desire'. Postmodern Culture. 7(2). [w/ hyperlinked article title]

Web page: Jamieson, Amber. 2011. ‘Slutwalk: Feminists take to the streets to reclaim "slut" in style'. Crikey.com.au. Viewed 25 February 2013. <http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/05/28/slutwalk-feminists-take-to-the-streets-to-reclaim-slut-in-style/> [w/ hyperlinked article title].

For anything else related to spelling and grammar, we prefer the The Australian Oxford Dictionary. We also prefer articles be written in Australian English.

Please include with your submission:

  • a biographical note of no more than 60 words;
  • an abstract of 100 to 200 words;
  • an indication (if appropriate) of your affiliated tertiary institution; and
  • three to five keywords or phrases suitable for inclusion in the index.

Writing From Below gives publishing preference to work that has not previously received publication. However, in the interests of giving gender, sexuality, and diversity scholarship the widest possible dissemination, we will sometimes reprint work that has been published elsewhere. In light of this, Writing From Below does not claim first publication rights.

Our copyright policy can be found here.

Submissions must be the sole work of the author(s) and not involve third parties with a claim to copyright. Permission to reproduce photographs and illustrations is the responsibility of the author(s), as is permission to reprint previously published work. 

All articles and all creative works submitted are subject to a double-blind peer review process.

No article charges

Please note that there are no article processing charges or submission fees. 

Reviews

For those interested in writing a 1000 to 1500 word review for Writing from Below (be it book [fiction, non-fiction, or outlaw genre], film, television, theatre, live or recorded music, artwork or exhibition, or any other artistic or cultural phenomenon), please contact our Reviews Editor, Stephen Abblitt. Books for review should be sent to Writing from Below, c/o- English Program, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia.

Commissioned Works

For non-peer-reviewed works commissed be the managing editors or associate editors.

Special Issue

A section specifically for our special issues (necessary, for example, when published alongside general issues i.e. the Death and the Maiden double issue).

Creative (without ERA statement)

In order for creative outputs (non tradional research outcomes/NTROs) to be considered as part of an academic's research portfolio, Australian contributors are required to complete an ERA statement.

Those works that do not need to meet this criteria, but are considered as necessary and vital contributions to ongoing conversations across and with academic institutions and indidvidual creative practitioners are included here.

Creative (with ERA statement)

In order for creative outputs (non tradional research outcomes/NTROs) to be considered as part of an academic's research portfolio, Australian contributors are required to complete an ERA statement. For examples of ERA statements please see: 

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. I grant La Trobe University the right of first publication of the Article in any form associated with the publication in Writing from Below.

2. I grant La Trobe University a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, world-wide non-exclusive licence to reproduce or communicate the Article in any form associated with the reproduction or communication of Writing from Below.

3. I agree that La Trobe University has the right to sub-license the Article under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs3.0)

4. I warrant to La Trobe University that the Article:

  • contains no violation of any existing copyright of any person;
  • does not contain any material of a libellous nature or unlawful matter; and
  • makes no improper invasion on the privacy of another person.

5. Should I as the author wish to grant a non-exclusive licence to a third party to publish, reproduce and communicate the Article at a later stage, I shall ensure that there is an acknowledgement that the Article was first published in Writing from Below by La Trobe University.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.